The Art of Politics

PDB Pretty Darn Banal

Someone file under "No Kidding"...

The declassified Presidential Daily Brief released by the White House on Saturday is remarkably unremarkable.

Why the discussion of this document? Because the words "New York", "Washington", and "Hijackings" appear along with "Al Qaeda" - but the context is completely disconnected. Unnoticed will be the casual dismissal of "sensational" threat reporting, such as the hijacking of an aircraft by Al Qaeda to gain the release of imprisoned Al Qaeda extremists.

The real bombshell is unlikely to be picked up by most, who are more interested in shiving the political opposition than in constructive analysis of how to improve national security.

The bombshell is the line "Al-Qa'ida members ? including some who are US citizens ? have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks."

The bombshell isn't the 47th variant in spelling Al Qaeda, but that it's apparently been known for years that members travelled to and from the United States and maintained a domestic support structure here. An open society allows cover to those aiming to destroy it. We can only allow the wolves to walk among us so long and act suprised that they've attacked the innocent.

All the domestic surveillance, the Patriot Act, all the actions being undertaken now - the same ones currently under fire by Sen. Kerry and many others of the left and libertarian right - are the ones that should have kept Al Qaeda from using the United States like a Red Roof Inn.

NOTE: As the CIA prepares the PDB, there is no information on what level of input the NSC or Richard Clarke had on it's content - therefore, no assignment of knowledge can initially be made to who assigned or shared the assumption of the hijacking plot as "sensational" - and we will not either, and have redacted this message accordingly.

Posted by MEC2 at April 10, 2004 11:24 PM